EU to Push for Tech Tax If Global Effort Fails, Vestager Says

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union will still pursue a digital tax even if a global push at the OECD fails, the EU’s new digital czar told Bloomberg TV.

• Margrethe Vestager, currently the EU’s antitrust chief, is set to gain additional regulatory oversight as the European Commission‘s executive vice president in charge of digital affairs.
• “It would only be fair if we picked it up again if a global solution were not possible,” she said.
• The EU is planning a comprehensive strategy on data and how it ties into artificial intelligence, she said.
• On mergers, companies “can’t just acquire access to data you would otherwise not been able to have if that poses a problem to competition,” Vestager added.
• She said that the EU will continue to investigate Amazon.com Inc. on competition concerns and has asked Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. “a lot of questions.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at ndrozdiak1@bloomberg.net;Maria Tadeo in Brussels at mtadeo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman

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